Where Men and Mountains Meet(20 Mar. 2011)

With the specter of jail time looming, Bill charts out contingency plans for the family, while orchestrating a last-minute preemptive referendum on the senate floor. Meanwhile, Barb goes ... See full summary »

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Storyline

With the specter of jail time looming, Bill charts out contingency plans for the family, while orchestrating a last-minute preemptive referendum on the senate floor. Meanwhile, Barb goes forward with her plan to join a reform-minded church; Margene contemplates taking a hiatus to serve as a volunteer abroad; and Nicki despairs being left alone as her family splinters. Cara Lynn considers a return to her roots; Ben enlists Rhonda to help him win over Heather; Don shares some bad news with Bill about Home Plus. As Easter arrives, the Henricksons receive heartening support from their polygamist constituents, briefly lifting the dark cloud that's been hovering over the family since Bill's election. Finally, an unexpected vision leads Bill to a final confrontation with his most deeply-held beliefs. Written by
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I'm filing this under the guidelines of "spoilers", because there's still a very real chance that some fans simply have not seen the final episode as of yet. Indeed, the final episode aired on Sunday March 20th, but I didn't get a chance until yesterday (the 30th) to actually watch it On Demand. I deliberately avoided any websites or any other sources so as not to ruin the experience for my wife and I. So, let it be said- if you don't wanna know how the show ended and you continue reading this, you've got no one to blame but yourself.

Amazingly, word of what happened did not make it to my wife or I at all before we saw it. The closest I came to anything was on the day after the final show aired, when I saw that "Big Love" was in the top ten of Yahoo's trending topics. I didn't read too much into that, thinking it was only natural after a series finale.

I have to say that I was deeply unsatisfied with the ending they came up with. Indeed, I find it a little disturbing that the show's creators had said along the way that they had known what the final moments of the show would be- that it was pre-planned, from the very beginning, from the creation of the show. What on earth was the point they were trying to make with something that had such a horrid little ending like that? I would think that responsible creative types would know better, and would shelve an idea like that and never share it with ANYONE if all they could conclude with was something so ugly. I've already told my wife that I won't be able to watch any of the previous seasons now that I know what occurred- in fact, any plans to buy the full series on DVD now? Forget it. The series was one long head-fake into something that had (and this is a direct quote from series producer Mark V. Olson) a "subversive feminist core at the heart of this patriarchal material". Seriously, that was their intent from the beginning? Are they to have us believe that they weren't making a point about tolerance and acceptance? And that it's not necessarily a good thing to be too conservative- or too liberal? I'm sorry, but this whole thing (Bill dying of gunshot wounds while accepting a blessing from Barbara) smacks ultimately of trying to cater to a strictly female demographic.

And how misleading of those those HBO featurettes, leading us to believe that this final season was "a valentine to the viewers" and that "we all want to see the Henricksons win". My wife and I felt as though we'd been kicked in the head. Were they just trying to give us all the ending that we THOUGHT "The Sopranos" was going to have?

I should have seen it coming. They used to have one of the most vivid, beautiful and creative opening sequences in TV history (with an incalculable boost from "God Only Knows") and then at the start of Season Four, they had changed it to that hideous, black, soggy and drippy thing that I never warmed up to at all. (In fact, and this is the complete truth, the first time I saw what they'd done to the opening sequence I literally screamed in disgust and dismay.) It was a show that moved me, challenged me, entertained me, impressed me in almost every single way that a TV series can. But that finale? "Big Love" seems more like "Small-Minded Contempt" to me.

(And what the #@*! happened to Alby?! One of the most memorable villains in television history, and he just vanishes from the proceedings with maybe one or two lines of dialogue that mention him at all?! A pox on it!!)

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